from the this-is-not-a-good-thing dept

Earlier this year, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) did a legal review of ACTA to see if it conformed with existing US law. While the USTR tried to keep the report buried, it eventually came out -- and basically said that ACTA was drafted in a dreadfully confusing and opaque way. The issue? It's not even clear if US law conforms to ACTA, because ACTA can be interpreted in many different ways -- some of which suggest the US is in compliance, and some of which say we're not.

The EU Parliament's legal service recently conducted a similar review and came to an identical conclusion: ACTA may or may not be legal... depending on how you interpret it.

This should be seen as a massive problem. When you're crafting a giant international agreement that is binding on various countries (and, yes, the US pretends it's not binding, but the other signers insist it is binding, meaning under international law, they likely can hold the US to a claim that it's binding), the fact that it's so vague that what is and what is not legal under it is totally wide open to interpretation means you've drafted a really bad agreement that shouldn't be approved. In the meantime, any country signing such a document should be ashamed of itself, because it doesn't even know what it's bound itself to.

Reader Comments

Politics and the internet

At least they are finally here with us in the internet age: they aren't reading the agreements before clicking "ok," just like the rest of us. Now they just need to start watching porn while in session. It would definitely make channels like C-SPAN more interesting. After all, that's what the internet is for.

Finally. I do hope ACTA gets shot down. With the amount of problems it's having I can see it happening (US congress is kinda angry with the fact the Govt rushed it bypassing them so, yea, pride is hurt).

But Mike, vague wording is just what's needed for the ACTA treaty to pass!

After all, it shifts responsibility to judges, so if you're a politician who voted for the treaty, and judges do something that your voters don't like when ruling on ACTA then you can just attack the judges for being activists, and promise to replace them with strict constructionists when they retire. It works real well for raising money from the anti-abortion crowd in the USA.

Re: Re:

Actually, since he did write that a law that can be interpreted in various ways, especially if some of them are illegal, is bad it follows that we should discourage the politicians from making such laws.

ACs logic does work, if you assume that all laws, or at least a big portion of them, can be interpreted as being illegal. That's the big hole in the argument.

ACTA truly is the ANTI-CONSUMER Trading Act.It does not conform to our written laws.It should be taken to court and shut down.It goes against our laws.
Just another sign of big money corruption and Washington.
PROTEST CORRUPTION and do some OCCUPY !!

Re: Re:

You only have to go look at any law "struck down as unconstitutional" to find laws that could (and were) interpreted as illegal.

You can look at the original COPA law, which was enjoined from enforcement in 1998, and found finally in 2007 to be "facially in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution" (thanks wikipedia).